Niehaus remembered by thousands at Safeco Field

Clockwise from top, a fan holds up a sign. Sherry Locke embraces her son Brandon during the ceremony. Mariners President Chuck Armstron points skyward during the ceremony. A Dave Niehaus jersey hangs in the empty broadcast booth. (Joshua Trujillo, Seattlepi.com) | Photo Gallery

The forecast Saturday was miserable, as the Mariners’ forecast has been during most of their 30-plus seasons. Still, as he did during the team’s tough times, Dave Niehaus made people smile.

“When the baseball club was at its worst, Dave was at his best,” broadcast partner Rick Rizzs told thousands gathered at Safeco Field celebrating the life of Niehaus, who died of a heart attack Nov. 10 at age 75.

Niehaus called the Mariners’ first pitch – a strike – from Diego Segui in 1977. When he died, Niehaus was the only original employee who remained.

He had offers to take different jobs for more money, more exposure and chances to consistently call playoff games. He stayed in Seattle because he loved it here, his son Andy said. To people around the Northwest, his voice was as recognized as a parent’s – a monaural, AM-radio greeting people counted on in their cars, their back decks, during big games.

It was that way for the players, too. Former Mariners catcher Dan Wilson, one of several to eulogize Niehaus on Saturday, recalled his inside-the-park home run at the Kingdome and how he couldn’t wait to get to the broadcast booth to hear how Niehaus called it.

“He made you want to listen,” Ken Griffey Jr. said in a video tribute. “You could always take something home.”

In 1985, Niehaus was ranked by Sport Magazine as No. 4 among baseball’s most accomplished announcers. That was an honor for the man who was raised faithfully listening to Harry Caray call balls and strikes for the St. Louis Cardinals, the nearest baseball team to his Indiana hometown.

He broadcast Gaylord Perry’s historic 300th win in 1982, and said Phil Bradley’s game-winning grand slam in 1984 was one of his favorite calls. Niehaus marked the Mariners’ first winning season in 1991 and threw out the first pitch at Safeco Field in 1999.

Mariners President Chuck Armstrong – who jokingly thanked Niehaus on Saturday, saying the applause he got before giving a eulogy was the first he’d received since March – choked up when talking about how Niehaus was a foundation of the franchise.

Armstrong announced the Mariners will wear a patch on the right sleeve of their jerseys next year. Also, Niehaus’ microphone will be on display at Safeco, and a statue of him will be unveiled during the 2011 season.

For as much as Niehaus loved baseball, he loved his family more. And he always asked about people in the lives of those he cared about.

Wilson recalled him always asking about his wife. He was never quite sure how Niehaus remembered her name with all the people he knew.

“He asked how the kids were every time I saw him,” Wilson said.

His broadcast booth was lined with pictures of his grandkids and family. The first Mariners game he missed was for his son Andy’s high school graduation. Niehaus was there when Andy and his two other children graduated from college and took time away to be at the birth of each of his six grandchildren.

“All the great things you saw in my dad, they were magnified in his personal life,” his daughter, Greta Niehaus Dunn, told the crowd.

An Indiana University graduate, Niehaus met his wife Marilyn at a party.

“The first thing he asked me was, ‘Do you like baseball?'” she once told the P-I.

She said no, but he still asked her to dance. That, his longtime broadcast partner said, was the best call of his life.

Niehaus was inducted into the broadcast wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008, and thanked the fans for helping him get there. During his time in Cooperstown, he got to hold Babe Ruth’s jersey and see plaques of people he admired. There would be others who would be inducted after him, Niehaus told the crowd that day, but no one would be more appreciative.